Echo Brown busts out some “dirty Beyoncé style” dance moves in her hit solo stage show, “Black Virgins Are Not for Hipsters.” The fierce dance sequence, a twerking bit of titillation, always proves to be a showstopper.

Ironically, it was one of the hardest parts of this steamy tale of sex, love and race to pull off. Brown felt so touchy and awkward about the bit that she didn’t even practice in front of her mentor and script developer David Ford. The Oakland resident waited until the one-woman show, which deconstructs notions of black identity, was in previews at The Marsh in San Francisco before letting everyone see it.

“It’s very revealing and I felt very vulnerable doing it,” says the warm and candid 31-year-old actor-writer, who adds that the bit brings out “some sensitive things about black identity.”

“It’s as if you get on stage and share your deepest, darkest secrets. Putting my sexuality out there in front of people can make me feel very exposed.”

Baring her soul in the autobiographical story was almost as hard. Only the adrenaline of being in the spotlight could help her battle her fear. “On stage I can do anything,” she chuckles. “On stage, I could lift a car.”

In “Black Virgins,” a cautionary tale of interracial romance in the age of OkCupid, Brown reveals her personal experience of online dating, losing her virginity and coping with insufferable Brooklyn hipsters. Her bravery has paid off. Critics have hailed the show as “magic,” “spellbinding” and “irresistible,” and The Marsh has extended the work through Sept. 12.

Brown leaps through a myriad of parts, including herself, her mother and various clueless hipsters during the hourlong whirlwind of a piece.

“What a powerful story she has to tell,” says Stephanie Weisman, executive director of The Marsh. “It is a story of our times, specific to her, relevant to us all. She is a beautiful performer. She is not only absolutely present every moment on stage, she is like a magnetic light. And she is very generous, giving her all at every single performance.”

Mind you, Brown is not your typical solo show artist, endlessly gazing into her own navel at center stage. The actress/writer became interested in this sort of stage show only recently, and she comes to the craft with a background in political science and investigative journalism and a lifetime of pondering the nature of black female identity in America. The upshot: There’s far, far more to black women than Beyoncé-style booty-shaking.

“The over-sexualization of black women has very much impacted me and my development as a person,” says Brown. “It’s very hard to find multidimensional portraits of black people in the media while white people can represent the full spectrum of behavior.”

Growing up poor in Cleveland, where many of her friends and family members turned to alcohol and drugs to numb the pain of their circumstances, she became fascinated by the way people construct a sense of identity. She also grappled with her own depression and stress caused by her hardscrabble childhood.

“Poverty gets into your brain, it gets into your bones,” she notes wistfully. “People ask me how I overcame it, but I’m not sure that you ever do.”

Brown has a steely determination, and she focused all of her energy on getting past her childhood suffering. She was the valedictorian at her high school before heading to Dartmouth College and Columbia Journalism School. From there she got a job investigating cases of police brutality in New York.

The experiences taught her that racism is pervasive in American culture from coast to coast, a topic that continues to grab headlines in the wake of recent events from South Carolina and Baltimore to Ferguson.

“At Dartmouth I had people calling me (the n-word) while I walked across the green,” she says. “That doesn’t happen in California, but in some ways it’s harder because at least on the East Coast, you know where people stand. Here it’s more of a Jedi mind trick.”

She thinks one of the biggest obstacles in the country’s racial discourse is denial, which she feels is pervasive in the liberal Bay Area.

“Let’s not pretend,” she says. “Racism is in the air that we breathe. You can’t get away from it, so we have to try and face it head-on.”

That’s precisely what she hopes to achieve with her show. She says she’s been told some audience members are so moved by her honesty that they can’t speak afterward.

“I dive right into the deep end,” she says. “It’s really cathartic for people to know they are not alone in what they feel.”

Age: 31Residence: OaklandOccupation: MonologuistCurrent project: “Black Virgins Are Not for Hipsters” at The Marsh, San Francisco (www.themarsh.org)Quote: “Poverty gets into your brain, it gets into your bones. People ask me how I overcame it, but I’m not sure that you ever do.”

Karen D'Souza is the theater critic for the Mercury News and the Bay Area News Group papers. She is a three-time Pulitzer juror, a former USC/Getty Arts Journalism Fellow and a longtime member of the Glickman Drama Jury and the American Theatre Critics Association. She has a Master's Degree in Journalism from UC Berkeley. She is a Twitter addict (@KarenDSouza4), a fangirl and a mommy and her writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle and American Theatre Magazine.